liminal lyrics
liminal lyrics
October 16 – November 20, 2016
Opening Sunday, October 16, 4 - 6 PM
Curated by Hedwig Brouckaert
Artists: Nelleke Beltjens (NL), Hedwig Brouckaert (BE), Alexander Gorlizki (USA), Carol Hepper (USA), Stéphanie Leblon (BE), Sofie Muller (BE), Lucy Puls (USA), Max Razdow (USA), Taney Roniger (USA), and Bart Stolle (BE)
A quality of ambiguity and disorientation characterizes the work of the artists in ‘liminal lyrics.’ The classic boundaries of the physical body are broken up, a fixed, static image of the figure is lost, and a new frame of reference is not yet defined. Whether representational or abstract, each of the artists’ works depicts some kind of in-between space and/or a state of suspense -- and also a moment of freedom.
Based on swimming figures, the pencil and gouache drawings by Stéphanie Leblon (‘Liquid Bodies’) deal with fluidity and transformation. Once under the waterline, the solid body relinquishes its classic boundaries: the figure dissolves and is freed from its representational form. In ‘Psychonomics’ Sofie Muller uses fire and her own blood to create very intricate and expressive images of heads in different stages of emerging and dissolving. Hedwig Brouckaert decomposes images of the figure depicted in various forms of mass media by layering them densely over each other. Using drawing, collage and digital processing, she creates a wholly new sense of the figure that refuses a stable outline. Nelleke Beltjens’ elaborate drawings with pens, reinserted cut-outs and tape don’t have a relationship with the figure, but ‘it is not how I thought #2’ is very much concerned with a transitional state, a sense of liberation from fixed forms. Made from a simple set of bifurcation patterns but configured in complex layering, Taney Roniger’s ‘Inscapes’ seem to hover between realms -- the material and the immaterial, the real and the fictive, the finite and the infinite -- without ever resolving into either.
Alexander Gorlizki’s precise, mesmerizingly detailed work on paper originates from an obsession with Indian Miniature paintings – collaborating with Riyaz Uddin, a master painter in Jaipur, India. With inspiration from both West and East, high craft and popular culture, Gorlizki's work fluctuates between the mythical and banal, the mysterious and the everyday. Imbued with a deep awe for nature and the mythical, Max Razdow’s ‘Well Cards’ were made in a ritual fashion as part of the ‘Veil of Dreams’, a collaborative project with Jesse Bransford. Over a six month period, the artists inspected the tradition of Icelandic Seidr practice and journaled their dreams nightly. Carol Hepper’s sculptures ‘Pet’ and ‘Bison’ combine natural elements with industrial materials, turning them into powerful hybrid beings. The anthropomorphic machines or robot-like figures in Bart Stolle’s animation film ‘Darwinian Symphony’ reflect on our complex relationship with the analog and digital worlds. Stolle’s economical and purified visual language, referring to emoticons, is often in stark contrast with the emotional content of the figures’ narratives. At the height of the mortgage crisis in 2008, Lucy Puls, illicitly entered foreclosed homes in the Bay area and documented signs of forced abandonment, worn carpets, moldy ceilings, scratched wood veneers and faded wallpaper. In her ‘Constitum’ series she applied layers of paint on top of these photographs, laying bare some of the violence inherent in them, resulting in strangely disorienting and poignant pieces.
Kunstraum LLC, a gallery and studio community, opened in early 2015 by the Navy Yard in Brooklyn. As an interdisciplinary team of curators, artists, and architects, we seek to promote local and international emerging art and outstanding art concepts. By opening our gallery to different art professionals interested in sharing engaging ideas, unconventional thinking, and risk-taking, Kunstraum pushes the parameters of emerging, international, contemporary art. Recent projects include Video Shop, awarded the Artspace Fairgoers’ Award at NADA NY and features in Interview Magazine, ArtNet and Vice.
Kunstraum gallery is open by appointment Th-Sa 12-6 PM
Press Contact: Nadja Marcin, 646.924.9656, nadja@kunstraumllc.com
Image: Nelleke Beltjens détail: ‘It is not how I thought #2’, 2014, ink pen on paper, wide ink marker, canvas tape, reinserted cut-outs, 19.6 x 25.6 inches, courtesy of the artist
Thanks for the support of the Flemish Government.